Damage (2 page)

And then he pushed his headphones up to cover his ears and closed his eyes, the conversation abruptly dismissed.

§

He was a strange one, Mr Blunt.

She’d cleaned his living room, but still didn’t know much about him. The mess was superficial, like cleaning a holiday let rather than somewhere properly lived in. The furnishings and antiques were well chosen, but very impersonal.

So far, all she knew was that he was a gruff man who loved his dog and lived alone. A man whose bark was probably worse than his bite, even if his first reaction was always to bark, it seemed.

A man with connections to the area, so not a complete stranger, then.

A businessman who didn’t want to have anything to do with his business any more.

A man who appeared to have lots of barriers around himself to keep people out.

Gay, she was sure. There was something about him. And also, she had enough gay friends to understand that even in these enlightened times they usually had to protect themselves from a cruel world by putting up barriers around their lives, just as Blunt did.

§

She hadn’t expected anyone to be in the bedroom, and certainly not a woman wearing only a tiny black thong, lying flat out on the bed like a disheveled starfish.

“Oh, erm... I’m sorry, I...”

The woman was tall and leggy, her skinny body angular as if someone had drawn out her geometry precisely beforehand. She had jet hair that looked dyed, big dark eyes and something East European about her features beneath the smudged make-up.

She sat bolt upright on the bed when Holly came in, and then clutched her head in both hands melodramatically. “Oh,” she said. “That hurt.” Then: “No, no, it’s okay. I’m not sticking around.”

Holly stopped in the doorway, unsure whether to carry on retreating or to simply push the vacuum in before her and start clearing up. There was a champagne bottle in an ice bucket over on a dresser by the window. Champagne flutes on tables to either side of the enormous, canopied bed. Clothes on the floor: black trousers, a white shirt, black shorts, socks; a slinky little black dress that the woman was now pulling over her head and down across that long super-model body.

All it took was a matter of seconds. How did people like her do it? Instantly, this woman was like a calendar girl. The smudged make-up looked stylish, like something artfully done for a photo shoot; the hair had a choppy cut, so the straight from bed look was like something a stylist might work on for an hour to arrange just so.

And here was Holly. Ordinary everyday Holly in her faded jeans and pumps, the t-shirt and the little apron with the pockets that held the tools of her trade. No make-up, her nondescript brunette hair tied back in a pony-tail. Just Holly.

“So?” said the woman, and Holly realized she’d been staring.

Then the hostility melted and the woman leaned closer, tottering on the heels she’d just pulled on. “You listen, okay? You don’t let him touch you, okay? You don’t wanna know what he’s like.”

“No?” said a man’s voice.

It was Blunt, standing behind Holly so that suddenly she was caught in the middle.

She stepped into the room and then sidestepped, feeling silly as she still pushed the vacuum cleaner before her. Just what she needed: caught in the middle of a domestic.

“You were leaving, weren’t you?”

For a moment it wasn’t clear who he was addressing, then the dark-haired woman hissed something Holly couldn’t make out, and stormed out of the room.

An instant later there was the slam of the door through to the main building and then she was gone.

Blunt had turned those cold gray eyes on Holly now. “I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Just one of my tarts. Good riddance to her.”

§

You don’t have to like the people you clear up for.

Holly kept reminding herself of this as she cleaned the bedroom and bathroom, clearing away the evidence of what had evidently been a night of drunken passion. She found fresh bedding in a cupboard off the lobby, the sheets still in their plush packaging.

Just one of my tarts. Good riddance to her.

She’d dealt with some pretty unpleasant people before. Friday night pulling pints in The Bull was always a good yardstick, and Nicholas Blunt was right up there with the stupidest drunken cricketers at turning out time.
Just one of my tarts
, indeed...

The old bedding all went into a sack marked with the name of a local linen service for cleaning, and the new sheets went on, crisp and perfectly smooth.

The bedroom was actually quite girly, with the canopied bed and pastel colors. This reinforced Holly’s suspicion that the whole place had been furnished by someone who didn’t know who would be living here, given a brief by someone who didn’t really care.

She lined up everything on the dresser and bedside tables, got the curtains perfectly aligned, straightened the plush stool where it was tucked away under the dresser. This OCD need for order was what she did when she was cross, when she was bottling something up.

You don’t have to like the people you clean for.

It was like a mantra, going round and round in her head now, as if repetition might make her actually believe it.

§

“I’m done now.” She did her best to force brightness into her tone.

At first she thought he hadn’t heard her, then he looked up and slid the earphones back. His first reaction was that bark, the instant look of suspicion, of hostility, and then it was as if he forced himself to put his friendly face on.

That first response sparked something in Holly, though, and before she could stop herself, she said, “And good riddance to me, eh?”

His face clouded and he stood, and there was a long, awkward pause as they stood across the study from each other.

“Not good riddance at all,” he said, his tone surprisingly soft. Then he spoilt it by adding, “You’re not one of my little tarts, after all, are you?”

So why did she have to get so angry on behalf of someone who, as far as she knew,
was
a little tart?

“That’s no way to talk about people,” she said.

“No?” he said. How had he got so close, so that now he was standing almost toe to toe with her, fixing her with those chilly gray eyes? “You know her, do you? You can speak on her behalf?”

Holly looked away. There was something about the intensity of that look, the way it triggered a response she didn’t like, an adrenalin rush, a fighting response, all anger and frustration mixed up together.

“It’s just... just not nice. That’s all.”

He reached out, put a finger under her chin. His touch was cold and dry as he tilted her head up to face him.

He was smiling. Was he laughing at her? His mouth turned up more on one side than the other when he smiled.

“I...”

She pulled her head away and backed through the doorway.

“I have to go.”

All the way home her heart was pounding and there was an angry, frustrated fire in the pit of her belly and her head was a swirling rush of thoughts that she could barely grasp.

She walked fast, her head dipped down, oblivious to the gold and copper of the beech trees, the thin blue of the autumn sky, the crunch of leaves on the ground.

How had that happened? That thing. That playground thing where antagonism turns to something else? Where your body’s reaction takes you completely by surprise.

That touch, the pressure of his finger under her chin. The look in his eyes as he tipped her head up, as if all the barriers had suddenly fallen away. Briefly. So briefly.

All the way home she went over what had just happened in her head. Her response to that touch; the electricity in the air; the sudden intensity.

But how old was he? Almost old enough to be her father, for starters. Mid to late thirties. Since when had she had a thing for older men?

Even if you could put his age aside... his
personality
, for God’s sake!

He was arrogant, hostile,
angry
. He was rude and dismissive. He was a cold shell of a man who seemed to delight in being unpleasant to people.

Her reaction in that moment hadn’t been the true her. It was just an artifact of the adrenalin rush, an anger thing, mistaken for desire. A different kind of passion.

It shouldn’t have disturbed her nearly as much as it had, and finally she forced herself to slow down and enjoy the light of the setting sun and the way it turned the Cotswold stone of the village’s buildings a vibrant, honeyed gold.

Finally, finally, her racing heart calmed and she was able to breathe.

It didn’t matter. Didn’t matter at all.

Just a stupid little thing.

She’d forgotten Ruby was coming for dinner that evening. Ruby was a year younger than Holly, still in her teens. She’d moved out when she was sixteen, not long after their mother had died. Holly had never let on to their father that Ruby had first moved into a squat with junkies and anarchists and not the genteel Cheltenham lodging house she’d always implied. Their father doted on Ruby. The wild child who’d fled because she couldn’t bear all the doom and gloom had always been the apple of his eye.

Holly was in the kitchen when Ruby pulled up in the back yard in her little Mini. She’d certainly gone up in the world, in a very short space of time. New car, designer clothes, shoes with needle-thin heels that had her towering over Holly as the two hugged.

“Hey, baby,” said Holly.

“Hey, sis’. How’s university?”

“Oh, you know,” said Holly. She was in her second year of a three-year graphic design degree, always juggling to fit her study in around the various part-time jobs she had taken on. “How’s things with you?”

“Good, good.” Ruby worked at a country house spa now, and made no secret of the fact that she’d risen from receptionist to assistant manager by sleeping with the owner. “How is he?”

Holly shrugged. “Same old, same old,” she said. Their father. He’d be sitting in the living room, watching
Antiques Roadshow
or doing the
Times
crossword. Three years ago he’d lost everything, and ever since then he’d been a broken man.

“And you?”

It was funny. Ruby had changed so much in the last year or so. From torn jeans and purple hair to this immaculately turned out young woman – and she was still only nineteen, for goodness sake. She’d gone out there and lived; she’d done that old clichéd thing of finding herself.

And what had Holly achieved in that time? Muddling through a degree, cooking and cleaning for their father, going out to work where she served people drinks and food with a smile plastered over her face and then heading straight on to another job to clean up after them.

“I’m good,” she said, suppressing a big sigh.

“Yeah?” said Ruby, clearly not believing her. “And how about Tommy Lefevre?”

Tommy. Holly’s childhood friend who’d become something more while they were doing their A levels, but when Mum had passed away, well, Holly had needed to prioritize. “Tommy’s fine,” she said. As far as she knew. She saw him around the village every now and again and they chatted. They were still friends, just not as close as they’d been.

“Come on,” Holly said, decisively. “Let’s go inside. Dad’ll know you’re here. He has a sixth sense for you, you know that.”

§

They sat around the small kitchen table eating cottage pie, the conversation stilted and mostly revolving around Ruby’s work and the bad feelings among some of her colleagues about her rapid rise.

“I was up at the Hall today,” Holly said. “Cleaning job.”

“Ooh... what was that like? The new guy... what was he like?”

“Fun,” said Holly. “Just some bad-tempered, misogynistic Yorkshire man, living there with his dog.”

“I heard it was some kind of industrialist,” said their father. Holly didn’t think he really talked to anyone apart from his two daughters, so his contribution to the gossip was something of a surprise. She needed to get him out of the house more.

“Yes, that’s right,” she said. “Mr Nicholas Blunt, of BI Incorporated.”

“Blunt... Blunt,” said their father. “Wasn’t that...? There were Blunts who used to come to the store, way back. Got to know them a bit. Wonder if it’s them?”

“Nicholas Blunt,” said Ruby. “That’s it. He has big parties. I’ve been up there with the girls, once.”

“That’s the one,” said Holly. “You should have seen it this afternoon. There was a whole team of people in to clear up the mess.”

“You know why he’s like that, of course?” asked Ruby.

“Like what?”

“Shuts himself away, then has big parties and throws his money around like it’s going out of fashion.”

Holly shrugged, reluctant to show too much interest.

Ruby glanced at their father, then went on. “He’s a widower,” she said. “Some time last year, I think it was. Big car crash. They’d been to a party, some big gala do, and she was driving. Flipped the car head over heels. He ended up lying in a field, but she was still in the car. Sandy was telling me about it only the other week after she’d been to his party and Googled him. After the crash he just gave up on everything. He bought the Hall because his wife’s buried in a family graveyard somewhere near here.”

Another glance at their father, before she continued. “He used to be a bright young thing, but after the crash he started just shutting himself away. He used to be a philanthropist. That’s where they’d been that night: a big charity bash, a fundraiser for some good cause or other.”

They fell quiet, then, and Holly wondered what was in her father’s head, whether he’d even made the connection between the story of Nicholas Blunt and his own loss. He didn’t seem too put out: maybe he’d blanked it all, like he blanked so much about the world that he no longer liked.

And Blunt. Nicholas Blunt.

Ruby’s story explained a lot. The anger, never far from the surface. The way he lashed out and mistreated people. The fact that he’d bought himself a country residence where he could shut himself away from the world.

Holly felt guilty for leaping to judgment. Maybe he didn’t deserve her condemnation, but rather her sympathy.